


Hair

by deuil



Category: JoJo no Kimyouna Bouken | JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-01
Updated: 2012-10-01
Packaged: 2017-11-15 10:09:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/526132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deuil/pseuds/deuil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It was always his mother who had cut his hair when Buccellati was a child, warm fingers tangling in jet-black, even warmer smiles concealed behind those strands." </p><p>Buccellati's relationship with his father and his mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hair

He remembers soft hands, soft lips, pressed against the side of his head, where his hair meets his cheek. It was always his mother who had cut his hair when Buccellati was a child, warm fingers tangling in jet-black, even warmer smiles concealed behind those strands. His mother had preferred longer hair, always arguing with his father over the length (too long, too short, too feminine, too obviously masculine), but it was always she that had won in the end, meeting her patiently waiting son in the bathroom with her scissors.  
  
"Stay still, Bruno."  
  
The timing was always the same. His mother never took more than ten minutes to finish trimming his hair: just enough time to hum two songs in succession, a tuneless, pleasant string of sounds, his hair falling in rhythm to the cutting. Buccellati doesn't remember what those songs sounded like anymore, but he still remembers the feeling, like a lazy haze, the feeling of clouds falling onto white porcelain. Like a wakeful sleep.  
  
"There. All done."  
  
And his mother would lean in, always, a kiss to the cheek, brushing away stray strands from his nose, his eyelids. Always the same length, the black almost reaching his chin, but not quite.  
  
"Just enough hair so that it tickles me when I kiss you, mm?"  
  
Buccellati remembers the smile, the smile pressed against the same spot again and again, like a good-luck charm. _My son, Bruno_.

His mother had always smelled like the sun, whereas his father carried the salt of the ocean on his skin. The two scents, he realizes now, had never mingled.

And it was a few days after he and his father shared dinner together, just the two of them, the third chair remaining empty, that Buccellati finally felt a strange sensation against his chin-- hair, hair that had grown, grown over the portion of skin that his mother always nudged lovingly, obscuring the memory. Covering it.  
His father had never been one for words, but upon noticing that his son had stopped eating, he had put his fork down, leaving the room silently only to come back with the familiar pair of scissors, laying it down gently on the table beside Buccellati.  
  
"You should cut it."  
  
He understands now why his father didn't offer to cut it himself, and Buccellati almost feels thankful for it, thankful for his father's quiet acceptance all those many years ago, for the silence. The bathroom had been cold and empty, but Buccellati made sure to take less than ten minutes to trim his hair (trying to remember how his mother's voice had sounded as it reverberated around the room), though his fingers had been too small and too clumsy in the scissors.  
Leaving enough space for his mother to kiss him, Buccellati had looked in the mirror at his reflection, and in the stillness, had wondered if it was sunny in Milan.

"Bruno."

It's Christmas now in Milan, and the snow is piled high in the streets, covering the ground in a thick carpet, muting footsteps and obscuring vision. Buccellati leans against the doorframe to his mother's apartment, the warm filtering in through the entrance hall to the cold outdoors, his mother's smiling face greeting him at the door. Her arms move and embrace him, the same feeling that they've carried since he was seven, a welcoming but tentative hold, learning a sense of reserve over the years, through the days that they haven't met.  
  
"Mother."  
  
Closing his eyes, Buccellati breathes in his mother's scent, a scent that he finds has remained relatively constant through the years-- though it no longer smells of the same Naples sun, but the crisp light of Milan, of new streets and a different climate. But it's still the same sun, he thinks, as he pulls back, returning his mother's gentleness with one of his own, a similar curl of the lips, upwards.  
  
"You've grown so much."  
  
His mother's eyes narrow fondly, and she reaches out, brushing his semi-long hair back and tucking it behind one ear.  
  
"But still the same hair."

 

Buccellati recalls the last conversation that he'd had with his father.

("Your hair, Bruno."  
A pause.  
"It's gotten longer."  
Another break.  
"You should cut it.")

His father, who had encouraged the small connection that his son still had to his mother, who had always hinted that, for the yearly visits that Buccellati made to his former wife, that his son should always leave a spot for his mother to kiss, to tell him that she loved him.  
And Buccellati remembers how his father would send him off, standing at the platform looking into the train headed for Milan, a faint smile painting the stoic face, his hands (fishermen's hands, ones that Buccellati admired) always at his sides, in a silent wave.

("Your hair, Bruno."

"You should cut it.")

 

It's Christmas now in Milan, and the snow is piled high in the streets, outside of the window of his mother's apartment, the smell of cooking thick in the air.  
There's a moment of profound silence, reminiscent of Buccellati's father's silences, before his mother leans in, planting a kiss on the section of cheek that Buccellati and his father had always left open for her.

 

"Buon natale, Bruno."  
"Buon natale, madre."


End file.
